For Some Travelers Stranded in Airports, Relief Is in 140 Characters

Thursday

Some travelers stranded by the great snowstorm of 2010 discovered that when all else fails, Twitter might be the best way to book a seat home.

ATLANTA — Some travelers stranded by the great snowstorm of 2010 discovered a new lifeline for help. When all else fails, Twitter might be the best way to book a seat home.

While the airlines’ reservation lines required hours of waiting — if people could get through at all — savvy travelers were able to book new reservations, get flight information and track lost luggage. And they could complain, too.

Since Monday, nine Delta Air Lines agents with special Twitter training have been rotating shifts to help travelers wired enough to know how to “dm,” or send a direct message. Many other airlines are doing the same as a way to help travelers cut through the confusion of a storm that has grounded thousands of flights this week.

But not all travelers, of course. People who could not send a Twitter message if their life depended on it found themselves with that familiar feeling that often comes with air travel — being left out of yet another inside track to get the best information.

For those in the digital fast lane, however, the online help was a godsend.

Danielle Heming spent five hours Wednesday waiting for a flight from Fort Myers, Fla., back home to New York. Finally, it was canceled.

Facing overwhelmed JetBlue ticketing agents, busy signals on the phone and the possibility that she might not get a seat until New Year’s Day, she remembered that a friend had rebooked her flight almost immediately by sending a Twitter message to the airline.

She got out her iPhone, did a few searches and sent a few messages. Within an hour, she had a seat on another airline and a refund from JetBlue.

“It was a much, much better way to deal with this situation,” said Ms. Heming, 30, a student at New York University. “It was just the perfect example of this crazy, fast-forward techno world.”

Although airlines reported a doubling or tripling of Twitter traffic during the latest storm, the number of travelers who use Twitter is still small. Only about 8 percent of people who go online use Twitter, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit organization that studies the social impact of the Internet.

“This is still the domain of elite activist customers,” Mr. Rainie said.

Of course, an agent with a Twitter account cannot magically make a seat appear. More often than not, the agent’s role is to listen to people complain.

“@DeltaAssist is worthless,” wrote Amy Zopfi, an event services manager in Las Vegas who was stuck for hours in Salt Lake City and sent a stream of complaints to the Delta Twitter account. Delta officials readily admit that they cannot solve everyone’s problems through Twitter or Facebook.

Often, all the people running the accounts could do was apologize.

Sometimes, just connecting with someone at an airline can calm angry passengers.

He also said that stranded families were using their gadgets in a team approach to getting answers.

“Mom would be on Twitter, Dad on Facebook, Junior would be searching sites and whoever hit pay dirt first is the way the family would figure out what to do next,” he said.

Even when help is not forthcoming, the airline Twitter accounts serve as a news source. People could share information — and pain.

One woman sent messages noting every song from the 1980s JetBlue played while she was on hold and stranded in the airport in Burbank, Calif. (Terence Trent D’Arby anyone?)

Brian Devinney, who used to work in the travel industry, is stuck in Jacksonville, Fla., until his flight leaves for New York on Sunday. So on Tuesday night he spent three hours offering information to stranded travelers who were using the airline Twitter accounts.

“With Twitter, you have people who were reaching out looking for something, for a community of people stuck in the same situation,” Mr. Devinney said.

Airlines still prefer that travelers use the phone. Arranging itineraries in the limits of a 140-character Twitter message is not always efficient. And many of the people monitoring Twitter sites for airlines are not ticket agents nor do they have a secret stash of seats.

“We consider ourselves an information booth rather than a customer service channel,” said Morgan Johnston, a JetBlue manager of corporate communications. And airlines only have a handful of people working Twitter and thousands working the phones.

But that does not always help. Susan Moffat of Oakland, Calif., spent 48 hours trying to get through to JetBlue this week. She wanted to get back home from a visit to New York. She finally connected and, after holding for an hour, secured a flight back on New Year’s Day. The agent told her she might have gotten a quicker response if she had used Facebook or Twitter.

A casual Facebook user, Ms. Moffat said, it never occurred to her that traditional methods of communicating might not be good enough anymore.

“My question is, in order to book an airline reservation am I going to have to be friends with a company?” she said. “What about a phone call?”

Still, she realizes that might be a very old-school option. “It’s like trying to talk to my kids on e-mail,” she said.

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